This blog runs parallel to a new poetry blog 'Poetry Pinfold' (poetrypinfold.blogspot.com), and a new blog with poems in Dutch (bartnooteboomgedichten.blogspot.com)

Saturday, January 26, 2019

407. Growth and the good life

What is the
value of economic growth? It is needed to achieve enough prosperity, but why
seek ongoing, endless growth beyond that? Why should we go on generating more wealth
instead of working less, with more leisure to spend on other pursuits than
consumption and material acquisition? This question was asked in a book ‘How
much is enough?’ (2012), by Robert and Edward Skidelsky. They eloquently argued
that ongoing growth is not conducive to the good life. There, as I do in this
blog, they employ an Aristotelian virtue ethic, to replace the utilitarian
ethic that rules economic science and from there politics.

The most
fundamental point is that the good life entails a number of disparate
dimensions that are incommensurable, cannot be added and subtracted in a single
measure of value (see also item 79 of this blog). This upsets the paradigm of
utility maximization that rules economic thought. There is not one single value
to be maximized.

The
literature offers a variety of lists of the good things in life, such as:
health, courage, freedom or autonomy, love and friendship, empathy, material
well-being, pleasure, moderation, prudence, security, intrinsic value of work,
leading a useful life that contributes to society and nature, and more.
Incommensurability entails that they cannot easily be traded off. How can I
trade off love of knowledge and of my children, seeking satisfaction and
contributing to society, self-interest and altruism? They are qualitatively different.
And many of the goods of life are not tradeable.

Why does
economic growth crowd out many aspects of the good life? One factor is the
insatiability of human desire. Schopenhauer, for example, argued that
satisfaction of one want evokes new wants and if satisfaction were ever
achieved it would generate insufferable boredom.

The
Skidelsky’s recognized further factors. It is often the satisfaction not of
wealth itself but of having more than others that drives acquisitiveness. An
institutional factor is that with growth the poor can be pacified with the
prospect of rising income, reducing the need for the politically tougher
measure of more re-distribution of wealth, against the powerful lobby of the
rich.

Implicitly
or explicitly, economics, basing itself on liberal ethics. has made a
fundamental moral assumption. It is not up to government but to citizens to
determine what the good life is and how it is to be achieved. Governments
should be neutral with respect to values, preserving freedom and avoiding
coercion and paternalism.

There are
two faults with this view. First, governments do in fact, and necessarily, make
moral judgements in protecting the poor, sick and unemployed, fighting crime,
promoting security, protecting the environment, and promoting health, education
and culture. If in fact policy is value driven, it is better to make that
explicit and bring it into debate.

Second, it
is an illusion to think that consumers are autonomous in their preferences.
They are affected by advertising and other actions that fuel desire,
acquisitiveness, and spending.

Third, goods
are produced with built-in obsolescence. For example, the software of old
hardware, in computers and phones, is no longer supported, which forces people
to buy ever-new hard- and software with features they do not need.

The
underlying error of economic thought is two-fold. First the idea that preferences
are given, not affected by options of choice and processes of choice. In fact,
particularly from the pragmatist view set out in this blog, ideas, including
preferences, develop in interaction with the social and natural environment.
That also upsets the assumption that economic agents are autonomous.

So,
economics is fundamentally misguided, and we must look how preferences are fed,
formed and mobilized or ignored, and how that affects the good life.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Poetry blog

Poems posted on Poetrypinfold.blogspot.comComing down (a memory of Genevaa) NightYin and YangPoetry pinfoldSiëstaDown and out in the mindThe stream bears light (the Nasrid palace at the Alhambra)From one to many Sunday in GoudaOn the canalStanzas of stone (San Gimignano, torre grosso)The words have a ballNo rocket scienceMontreuxNew roomGenerationsSister (Paris)MotherMother 2Blessed solitudeCivil servantAdolescent lamentThe streamTender rip-offNight 2BirdsAtlas unmovedSeminar on KrakmaroDiplomacyDepositionWinter train in ThuringenSarajevoFar aheadHat trick on the canalFlowers of deathOn a camping one night

top 100 blog award

awarded October 2016

Bundles of blog

On my website (www.bartnooteboom.nl) I offer selected items from the blog, bundled according to theme, such as:basic incomea way out for socialism? identity, cultureevolution multiple causalityGod and religionrobots

powerknowledge, truth and inventionethics and moralitythe human conditionself and othertrustmeaning

Eastern and Western philosophypuzzles in philosophydemocracy, autocracy, and fascismvoice and exitNietzsche, nihilism and beyondTime, duration, and discontinuity: Bergson, Derrida, and Bachelardsystem tragedy

power, Foucaultsix more pieces on FoucaultLevinasMontaigneHeideggerBaudrillardWittgensteinZizek and Hegel